Articles

On the 25th anniversary of the Nirvana Nevermind album, photographer John Chapple decided to recreate the iconic cover with the original underwater baby, Spencer Elden. 25 years later, the baby is no longer a baby and the image looks a bit more mature. We sat down with Chapple and got some insight into the shoot and all of the interest behind it.

National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen has released an eBook titled Photographing Wild: Techniques of a National Geographic Photographer. The book is a 200-page downloadable e-book and focuses on 16 steps to make stronger photographs.

The results of the 2016 Monterey Shootout have been published. Backscatter and the Northern California Underwater Photographic Society (NCUPS) hosted the annual event. The event took place over the weekend of August 26-28th in Monterey Bay in California.

GoPro has announced a new suite of Hero 5 cameras, the Hero 5 Black and the Hero 5 Session, as well as the highly anticipated drone, the Karma. Both the Hero 5 Black and Hero 5 Session are waterproof without a housing to 33 feet. The Karma comes in a wearable backpack with a controller, stabilizer and grip and will be available October 23rd.

At the 2016 Our Ocean conference, president Obama officially designated the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic Ocean. The marine monument is roughly the size of Connecticut, 4,913 square miles, and includes seamounts and deep water canyons. The newly created marine monument is known as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument and is off the coast of New England.

California governor Jerry Brown signed legislation tuesday that bans killer whales from breeding and captivity. Starting in June of next year marine parks, like SeaWorld, will be able to use currently captive orcas for educational purposes only. The law was authored by assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica).

Artist Doug Aitken is planning to install interactive underwater sculptures off Catalina Island next month. The installation coincides with his most recent exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened this past weekend. The “pavilions” include reflective surfaces and are open to allow snorkelers and scuba divers to swim through and around them. The pieces will be suspended at 5, 10 and 50 feet deep.

Sony has introduced the FDR-X3000R and HDR-AS300R Action Cams. The former features 4K capture with the latter HD, but both are equipped with Balanced Optical SteadyShot image stabilization. The have a 0.5 inch 8.2MP Exmor R™ CMOS sensor with “big pixels” designed for video with a native 16:9 aspect ratio and a BIONZ X™ processor and their lens is a 26mm focal length with a fixed f2.8 aperture. There is a digital crop function that offers 17mm, 23mm and 32mm equivalent settings. A waterproof housing is supplied with both cameras.